With many companies involved with autonomous vehicles now testing their respective tech, they’re not expected to be part of the news cycle much. Until something bizarre happens, that is. And something of the sort happened over the weekend, involving a self-driving car by Cruise, and the San Francisco Police Department.
A video popped up on the internet showing a driverless car being stopped by San Francisco police. The car belongs to Cruise, a self-driving car company based in the same city, and its autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EV. It is assumed that the car was being stopped because its headlights were not turned on, despite it being around and about at night. Cue slight bewilderment as someone can be heard saying “ain’t nobody in it”.
Soon after, the Cruise autonomous vehicle appears to take off, going past the intersection with a traffic light, and then making another stop shortly after. The company has said the vehicle yielded to police, and then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the stop “as intended”.
We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles, including a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this.
— cruise (@Cruise) April 10, 2022
TechCrunch reports that Cruise had only two months ago started to let San Francisco residents hail rides in its driverless vehicles. Though the report also states that the vehicles were not completely autonomous, as a company spokesperson said that an employee directed the car to pull over at the second location. past the intersection. The company also claims that no citation was issued.
(Source: b.rad916 / Instagram, Cruise / Twitter via TechCrunch)
